Postfully Yours

Techcrunch recently pointed to a Pew Internet study (pdf) which provided statistics about Internet usage in the US. While I knew that 15% of the country had no internet access, I was surprised that the category which the Pew study categorizes as “Few Tech Assets” (those with no access, no interest, or no experience) includes 49% of the population.

It emphasizes the importance of what we’re doing. This kind of divide has consequences.

If someone isn’t on the same system we are, we lose contact and commonality. That’s one thing when the divide is between MySpace and Facebook users (with Friendster taking the role of Tiresias in this sad morality play). But when the population is effectively divided in two by the type of information they receive and the communities they have access to, there is a problem.

Postful isn’t the final answer to this, but it is a part of a solution. The Internet must be more than a place created and accessed by web browsers. It’s a system capable of extracting information from a huge number of sources and performing the radical translation necessary to output into whatever format people prefer. It shouldn’t matter whether you’re using computers, telephones, televisions, or letters.

For much of that 49% of the population, print is a channel they know and are comfortable with. Imagine the possibilities of helping to connect that group with the richness and possibilities already present online.